


He Made a Different Call

by andrastesgrace (RoxieFlash), gallifreyslostson



Series: Family Assembled [9]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-12
Updated: 2015-11-12
Packaged: 2018-05-01 07:13:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5196986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoxieFlash/pseuds/andrastesgrace, https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyslostson/pseuds/gallifreyslostson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Agent Barton deals with the fallout of his failed assassination of the notorious Black Widow</p>
            </blockquote>





	He Made a Different Call

**Author's Note:**

> Couple of things. We reject the idea of Clint’s secret family completely, so if you love that, these are not the stories you’re looking for. Also, we have a deep love of deaf!Clint, so that’s going to be a thing, with a background that mostly follows the events of the Matt Fraction run of Hawkeye with a slightly altered timeline.

Clint sat in Fury’s office, an ankle resting on the opposite knee and his fingers laced over his stomach. He’d been kept waiting to make him sweat, but it wasn’t happening.  He’d made the right call.  The kid didn’t deserve to die just because she’d been too fucked over to know there were good guys left, and she was too talented to waste before even attempting to prove her wrong.

Clint raised his head when the door clicked open, then watched as Fury stepped into his field of vision to round the desk.  The director slapped a file on the surface and leaned on it, a pose that would be intimidating if Clint was in a mood to be intimidated.  Since he wasn’t, he just stared coolly back, waiting.

“Tell me, Agent Barton,” Fury began, “are your hearing aids prone to malfunctioning around everyone, or is it just when I speak?”

“Neither, Director,” Clint drawled.  “Best set I’ve ever had.”

“Then maybe you can explain to me why I have a known threat sitting in my cells instead of in an unmarked grave.”

“Asset acquisition.” Fury raised his eyebrows, and Clint shrugged.  “She’d good.”

“Too good, and too unstable.”

“Can’t know that for sure,” Clint said, his tone unwavering.  “She was part of the Red Room operation.”

“I’m aware.  Explain to me how knowing she was molded from birth to be a weapon is supposed to make me feel better about keeping her in my cells instead of gone.”

“Did intelligence tell you she’s an independent contractor now?” Clint asked mildly, gratified when Fury’s visible eye narrowed a little.  “Couldn’t have been easy to kick that kind of conditioning.  Might be something salvageable left.”

The director gave him a long look.  “If there is, you’re gonna have to dig for it.”

That got Clint’s attention. “Why me?”

“Because anyone else who tries ends up with something broken,” Fury snapped, standing up straighter. “My best interrogators have two busted noses, seven cracked ribs, and a fractured ulna between them.”

“Why wasn’t she restrained?”

“She was.”  Fury pulled out his chair and sat down, steepling his fingers in front of him.  “The way I see it, Agent Barton, you brought home the stray.  You have to make sure she can be housebroken, or you need to put her down.”

Clint stared at the director for a long moment before making an irritated sound and standing, slamming the door behind him as he left.  He made his way down to the holding area, his jaw tight, and banged open the door as soon as he was buzzed in.

“Agent Barton, you might want to be careful–”

The guard at the door stopped when Clint simply looked at him, then shrugged and opened the door. Clint stepped inside, waited a beat, then ducked reflexively, in time to feel air sweep over him.  He reached out as he took a step, still doubled over, and caught a waist tensed to spring.  His other hand grabbed her arm as he straightened, pulling her back against him and pinning her arms against her chest.  Her leg tensed for a sweep, but a twist of his hips had her off balance, and he used the leverage to spin her and push her against the wall.  He moved his hand at the last second, moving it to her shoulder, trapping her arms between the wall and her own body.  His other hand was on her hip, and his knee dug into the back of her thigh to keep her pinned.

“Are you done?” he asked as she shot an evil look at him over her shoulder.  She muttered something in Russian, and he rolled his eyes. “Cut the shit, kid.  I’m tired, I’m hungry, I’ve got a couch and Netflix calling my name.”

“You’re a real prize, you know that?” she said, in english this time.

“Says the woman trying to kill me,” he snapped.  “Not exactly a ray of sunshine yourself.  Now, are you going to talk, or are you going to continue to be a pain in my ass?”

Her lips set in a tight line, and heaved a sigh as he glanced over her.  His eyes narrowed when he reached her cuffed wrists; it was hard to tell with the way he was angled, but one wrist looked considerably more chafed. Wouldn’t happen if she’d just settle the hell down, but still…he’d gotten good at noticing little things, and something about it niggled at him.

“What if I take off the cuffs?” he asked.  “Will you agree not to try to kill me?”

“I don’t  _try_ to kill people,” she replied.

“And I don’t miss,” he told her, applying a little more pressure to her shoulder and making her suck in a sharp breath.  His bullet probably hadn’t done any lasting damage, but it had slowed her down.  “I didn’t kill you, so how about extending the same courtesy for five minutes?”

“Take off the cuffs.”

He backed off slowly, tensed, but she didn’t try to fight him again.  He kept his eyes on her as he walked backwards toward the door and knocked for the guard.

“I need a chair and the keys to her cuffs.”

“Agent Barton, are you authorized to–”

“I’m authorized to kick your ass if need be,” Clint said evenly, and the guard sighed, unclipping the keys from his belt.  “Bring in the chair.”

She rubbed her wrists when he took off the cuffs, eyeing him warily, but took a seat on the bed when he told her to.  The guard brought in the chair, and Clint collapsed into it, running a hand down his face before considering the girl in front of her.  Small, slender, objectively a knockout, with surprisingly red hair and a less surprising closed off expression.  His eyes dropped to her wrist again, frowning when he realized that it wasn’t just chafed.  He leaned forward and reached toward her, pausing when she tensed, but then taking her wrist to examine it more closely; uneven scars ran around the place the cuffs were, far older than they should be.  He ran his thumb over the inside of her wrist and looked up at her.

“A gift from the Red Room?”

“One of them,” she replied, raising an eyebrow.

He dropped her wrist and sat back, crossing his arms.  “Here’s the deal, Natalia.  You…are becoming a problem for people accustomed to dealing with problems terminally.”

“Then why am I here?”

“Because you’re good at being a problem,” he said.  “So now you’ve got a choice, work for SHIELD, or be taken out by SHIELD.”

“Those were your orders?”

“No.  That was my decision.”  

She stared at him, the neutral mask fracturing a little in her confusion, and he was reminded of how  _young_ she was.  She didn’t seem it usually, especially when she was working a mark–she’d been all poise when she’d been with the diplomat in Belize, oozing charisma and knocking everyone on their asses with a brilliant smile.  But it had been there when she made him on the rooftop, the split second of genuine fear and uncertain hesitancy.  She was a problem, yeah.  But maybe that wasn’t the solution yet.

“The thing I can’t understand,” he said after a moment, “is why you’d do something almost impossible, shaking conditioning from birth, only to be exactly what they designed you to be.”

“I’m a freelancer,” she said.

“A freelancer making shitty calls that are making people line up to take you out,” he retorted. “Just because you’re not getting orders anymore doesn’t mean you’re not still controlled by that.”

“That’s a lot of talk for someone who just told me my choices are join SHIELD or die,” she snorted. “You’re no better than me.  At least I know what I am.”

“SHIELD isn’t the Red Room, Natalia.  They’re the good guys.”

“The good guys that choose who lives and dies,” she said.  “Just like everyone else with too much power.  Everyone who believes in something thinks they’re the good guys, Barton. It’s just perspective that changes which side you’re on.”

Clint narrowed his eyes. “What’s your perspective?”

“There are no good guys,” she said, shrugging.  “Just the highest paying ones.”

“Well, if it helps, SHIELD pay isn’t bad,” he said mildly.  “And it’s a steady gig.  And I think you’re wrong about good guys.”

“Let me guess,” she said, smiling.  “Here’s where you tell me you’re a good guy, you’re not like the others, that you represent the good guys.”

“Well, I didn’t kill you,” he reminded her.  “I feel like that could be a mark in my favor.  But I wasn’t talking about me.  I was talking about you.”  The smile faltered, and her expression became wary again.  “Like I said, becoming your own person at all wasn’t easy.  That took guts and a whole lot of strength that not a lot of people have.  You said everyone who believes in something thinks they’re the good guys, but you didn’t believe it.  So you did something about it.”

She stared at him a moment before asking, “Why are you here?”

“Because I brought you in, and apparently that makes you my responsibility,” he said, making a face. “I don’t want a responsibility.  I want a nap.  So it’s up to you, whether you’re going to let yourself be the person fucked over by Russia and get taken out because of it–by them, by SHIELD, by any of the other people whose radars you’ve gotten yourself on–or choose to be better than what they made you.”

“And what makes you so sure I can be?”

That…he didn’t really have an answer for.  None that wouldn’t make him incredibly uncomfortable, anyway.  But something about her fascinated him from the first time he saw her–that, along with everything he’d read in her file while he was tailing her, was what made him pull his rifle at the last second and hit her shoulder.

“Everyone deserves a shot,” he said finally.  “Even if they don’t think so.  So what I’m going to do is walk out of here, and I’m going to take the guard with me, and we’re going to go talk to Director Fury.  I’m pretty sure that given half a chance, you could get out of here and into another country before anyone even realized you’d escaped.  They’ll send someone else for you then, but you’ll see it coming, and you’ll probably kick their ass.  And the next one.  And you’ll run for as long as you can.  Or you’ll take the chance you’re being given and still be here when Fury comes to talk to you.”

“You’re just gonna walk away, leave me to get away?”

“Yep,” he said, standing. “Best of luck, Natalia.”

oOoOo

Fury definitely lived up to his name when he found out Clint had left her unguarded, but it had to be her choice.  She’d been used and manipulated long enough.

She was still there when Fury showed up…although she  _did_ manage to tackle him to the ground and give a list of employment demands, including choices in missions and weapons.  And a new name.


End file.
